Arsenal have stepped up their preparations for the World Cup period as they consider what to do while club football pauses in November and December.
"It’s a completely unprecedented season, not only because we are going to be playing a lot of weeks with two or three games, but especially because we have the World Cup coming up," Mikel Arteta said when discussing the upcoming tournament in Qatar. "We don’t know how that’s going to affect us, so we have to look at the overall picture. The preparation and the organisation is being done in regards to that."
The Gunners are likely to have stars such as Bukayo Saka, Granit Xhaka and Takehiro Tomiyasu all take off with their countries during the break, but a considerable number of players will not be involved as well.
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Karl Hein, Kieran Tierney, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Martin Odegaard and Mohamed Elneny will definitely not be going by virtue of the fact that their nations haven't qualified for the World Cup, while Rob Holding, Reiss Nelson and Emile Smith Rowe are unlikely to make the England squad and Eddie Nketiah is still yet to make a decision over whether he will switch his international allegiance to Ghana ahead of the tournament. Marquinhos is also unlikely to go to Qatar and the list of players staying behind could well rise after Gabriel Jesus, Gabriel Martinelli, Gabriel, Albert Sambi Lokonga, Ben White, Cedric and Fabio Vieira were all left out of their nation's senior squads during the current international break.
This presents a curious challenge for Arteta and his coaching staff as he seeks to stop his team from losing the momentum that has seen them climb to the top of the Premier League table. Various sports scientists have also suggested that the stop-start nature of this winter period could see players vulnerable to injury again when the club resumes a hectic schedule at the end of December.
With this in mind football.london understands that Arsenal have begun considering taking their remaining players on a warm weather training camp to Dubai. The Gunners did this in January of last season when a mixture of elimination from the cup competitions and a lack of European football saw a considerable break arise organically in the schedule. Players were also allowed to bring their families for what was by all accounts an extremely successful trip.
There is also the added bonus this year of Dubai's proximity to Qatar. Those players that are eliminated before the latter stages of the World Cup could well join up with the Arsenal group if they do indeed end up going out to the UAE. Should they make the journey it is likely that they will arrange friendlies in order to preserve players' match fitness and complement the warm weather training that is undertaken. The midseason trip could also provide some of the Gunners' talented youngsters a chance to impress in the absence of more senior members of the squad.
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